


The Chiapas Incident

by pallasite



Series: Behind the Gloves [94]
Category: Babylon 5, Babylon 5 & Related Fandoms
Genre: Backstory, Bigotry & Prejudice, Canon Compliant, Centauri, EarthDome, Essays, Fix-It, Gen, Historical, How Normals Get Away With Murder, How canon misled you, Martyrdom, Mexico, Pogroms, Politics, Propaganda, Psi Corps, Sacrifice, Telepath Law (Babylon 5), Violence, Worldbuilding, telepaths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-03
Updated: 2018-03-03
Packaged: 2019-03-25 23:07:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13844946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pallasite/pseuds/pallasite
Summary: Early 2156: According to global news reports at the time, a hundred telepaths in Chiapas, Mexico locked themselves in a church and set it on fire, and committed suicide supposedly in protest of telepath registration. The "Chiapas Incident," as this event came to be called, almost brought about an end to attempts to unify the "Earth Alliance" - a global government with universal laws, including telepath registration.Or maybe that's not what happened at all.The prologue ofBehind the Glovesishere- please read!





	The Chiapas Incident

**Author's Note:**

> What is this series? Where are the acknowledgements, table of contents and universe timelines? See [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10184558/chapters/22620590).
> 
> If you like _Behind the Gloves_ and would like to send me an email, I can be reached at counterintuitive at protonmail dot com. Do you have questions? Would you like to tell me what you like about this project? Email me!
> 
> I also have an [ask blog](https://behind-the-gloves.tumblr.com/), a [writing blog](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/pallasite-writes), and a "P3 life" Tumblr [here](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/p3-life) with funny anecdotes. :)

2156 was a rough year.

The "global government" idea wasn't working out - many countries didn't want to be a part of it (with Geneva making the laws for everyone), and many of the countries in it either wanted out, or objected to certain provisions of the arrangement.

Then the Centauri showed up, and in the ensuing political chaos, the proponents of a One World Government got their agenda pushed through.

One of the policies of this One World Government was global, mandatory registration (with the government) for all telepaths, forcing them into a second-class caste throughout all territory on or controlled by Earth. Telepaths had - and had always had - equal social and political rights as "normals" (a new term coined to separate themselves from the new "other"), but starting in 2115, politicians started "[[taking] away every right they had](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10292036)".

As I've already discussed earlier in the project, propaganda was instrumental to spreading these new policies of telepath segregation and oppression. Propaganda was used to stir up fear of telepaths (see [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10293074/chapters/22772363) and [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10491045)) and [to sell the new policies to the normal public](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10324169/chapters/22823876). Violence against telepaths was encouraged, and then blamed on the telepaths themselves (for not being registered or for doing something to provoke it). The "Globalist" plans to control the world (of which [controlling telepaths was one key component](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10381518/chapters/22927263)) would never survive if the world weren't unified by something - and (invented, fostered) fear of telepaths was the tactic of choice.

It wouldn't have worked, actually - the system was going to collapse - if the Centauri hadn't shown up and given humans something else to be unified in their fear about.

As I discussed in this essay [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10382478), early that year, there was an assassination attempt on the life of the Earth Alliance president Elizabeth Robinson, and the captain of the president's personal guard saved her life, but died himself of his wounds. Robinson discovered that he had been a telepath, something he had kept a secret because telepaths were banned from most jobs, including from being bodyguards to government officials! Had this fact emerged during Karges' life, it no doubt would have erupted into a terrible scandal - the president had had a telepath close in her presence for all of these years? ZOMG, HAS SHE BEEN COMPROMISED? HAS OUR SECURITY BEEN COMPROMISED?!

But he was dead, and the public did not yet know. Then the Centauri arrived, and violence against telepaths again erupted across the planet, as people blamed them for... everything. Clearly they were in league with the aliens to take over the world!

Robinson decided to get ahead of propaganda train by [creating some of her own](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10382478). She revealed that Karges had been a telepath and transformed him into the **_ultimate martyr telepath_** , dying for normals and the good of the Earth Alliance. While on one hand she used this story to "calm the violence" that had erupted across the globe - telepaths are good! they die for us! - at the same time, she used his death as part of a larger propaganda push for a universal Metasensory Regulatory Authority, independently chartered, and now renamed Psi Corps. (To honor his sacrifice, of course. And to help all those poor, poor telepaths come out of the shadows and live free, productive lives serving normals. /sarcasm/) She condemned the violence, then declared that it was caused, at its root, by people not knowing who the telepaths really were! And by telepaths not having a collective "home," where they could be safe and productive! Registration + segregation would solve that, you see.

She put forth "equal opportunity laws" - normals would never have to "unfairly" compete with telepaths again in the workplace, and telepaths could have a whole separate system over here where they could "reach their full potential in a safe, productive environment, and serve the Earth Alliance with pride."

99.9% of the world in one caste, .1% in the other. (And then we'll create the world's largest and most complex regulatory agency ever to keep that .1% "registered" and "controlled" and "in its place," with more money going to that effort than to literally any other agency IN THE WHOLE WORLD, because Priorities. Fuck it, let the Third World starve, we need to control telepaths, because SCARY TELEPATHS. And if normals object, those normals will blame and attack the telepaths themselves for "unfairly" getting all this money! Clearly they must have used their "scary telepath influence" over the world government to get it, amirite?)

(I also "love" it how normals act so shocked, _shocked_ that the Minbari have a caste system. ^_^)

And so, with the new fear of the Centauri (and the other races the Centauri told humans about), Earth didn't dissolve the Earth Alliance, no countries left it, and the other countries that had never been a part of the system swiftly came into the fold. Telepaths in those regions (e.g. the Central African Bloc) were now registered, as well.

But Robinson didn't invent the idea of "martyr telepaths." And she wasn't the first one to use the "martyr telepath" concept as propaganda to try to push through a political agenda.

She stole the idea, actually, from her political enemies.

**********

As I said last year, in that same [earlier post about Karges](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10382478) (the man, the myth):

"Suddenly, on April 6, the world was turned upside down with the arrival of the Centauri. A new wave of fear of "the other" broke out, and telepaths were the primary victims, facing levels of violence unseen since 2115. Once again they were accused of being spies, saboteurs, and agents of cultural subversion. Several Earth Alliance countries were already threatening to pull out of the "globalist" experiment if Robinson pushed for a universal MRA, and the chaos made matters worse. Opponents of telepath registration were already propagandizing "martyrs" of their own - the news had run constant coverage about the "Chiapas Incident," wherein a hundred telepaths allegedly locked the doors of a church, set themselves on fire, and died singing in protest of registration, while MRA officers stood helplessly outside.

"Robinson herself needed a good story to justify her globalist MRA - the Corps. If her opponents had martyrs, she needed them, too."

Canon's always a little misleading when it comes to "martyr telepaths." It's stated in multiple places through canon that the Karges story was distorted, even "a fairytale." The Narn telepaths, contrary to what's written in the Book of G'Quan, didn't all martyr themselves in the fight against the Shadows - some did, but the rest [were slaughtered](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11852073). And then G'Quan and his followers lied and covered it up.

The "Chiapas Incident" is another example.

From Dark Genesis, p. 115-116 (immediately before the assassination attempt on Robinson's life, the Centauri arrival, and Robinson's announcement about the formation of Psi Corps, all of which is mentioned (in the next three pages)):

_"Well. We've seen this before, haven't we?"_

_"Yes, we have. But there's no stopping the hearings this time. And this time they have the goods, I'm afraid. The Chiapas incident made too big a splash. Japan, the Indonesian Consortium, Amazonia, and New Zealand are all threatening to pull out of the EA if President Robinson pushes further for a universal MRA."_

_"It's just an excuse," Lee muttered. "The EA is hanging together by a thread anyway. Teeps are just one issue."_

_"That's true, but - do you remember the American Civil War?"_

_Lee rolled his eyes and waved his hands around at his mid-twenty-first-century antebellum revival house. "What do you think?" he snapped sarcastically._

_Kevin chuckled. "I forgot where I was. Then you may remember that the war was brought about by a whole complex group of economic and social issues - but it was the moral issue of slavery that proved to be its focus. It's the same here - give the people something they can hang on to. You're right - the Earth Alliance is trying to tear itself apart for a thousand reasons, but the Chiapas incident has given it a popular voice. You have to admit, a hundred rogues dying, singing in a church, while our officers stood outside-"_

_"It's not like we set the damn fire." Lee sighed. "Damn psychopathic martyrs."_

_"But the perception that they would rather die than be regulated by the Authority, that's the point. People generally like martyrs."_

_"Don't they," Lee said, taking another sip. "Even if it means letting the world go to hell in a handbasket."_

Canon also loves its heavy-handed, oversimplified historical parallels, as we shall see.

Unfortunately, canon's presentation here - that these telepaths actually martyred themselves in protest of registration  - just doesn't add up. Yes, what they're saying about the EA hanging on by a thread is true, yes, what they're saying about telepaths being only one of many issues facing the EA is true, yes, the MRA didn't start the fire in the church, that's true, but.

  * Mexico? Why Mexico?



There are several places on Earth at this point in time where telepaths are not registered. Japan, the Indonesian Consortium, Amazonia, New Zealand, the Russian Consortium and India were all member states in 2156, as far as I can tell, but telepaths there were not registered. China is unclear. The Central African Bloc was not a member state, nor were telepaths there registered. There may have been other places that also were not member states, but they are not named in canon.

Mexico hardly mentioned in canon at all, in any context. A telepath there is critically wounded by normals in the violence of 2115, and the Dexters and Walters are mentioned as having been to Mexico, but that's really it. So if anyone was going to commit mass suicide in protest of registration, they would probably do so in some country where there is no registration, not in Mexico, where apparently there has been registration for almost forty years.

This has to be a country with telepath registration - why else is the Authority there _at all_?

  * "While our officers stood outside"?



So a hundred people lock themselves in a church, set it on fire and try to kill themselves, and everyone's standing outside with their thumbs up their noses while the people inside burn to death? Really? You expect me to believe a hundred unregistered telepaths got together and set themselves on fire _because_ the Authority found them, and that's why the Authority couldn't do anything to save them?

I can believe that mundanes would look the other way if there were only telepaths inside a burning building - canon's full of people like that, though they might at least care because they want to save _the building_. But this says that _telepaths with the Authority_ stood outside helplessly as everyone inside burned to death. They didn't try to rescue the telepaths inside? They didn't try to get help from the normal fire department?

  * Speaking of which, where are the normals in this picture? At all?



We have a hundred telepaths who supposedly all got together in a church and set it on fire to commit mass suicide. Someone called the Authority - these folks are predecessors to Psi Cops. It would take some time for them to show up, since they can't be everywhere at once. And then for some reason, they can't do anything.

Where are the normals? There would have to be a lot of them around - telepaths are one in a thousand. A city large enough to have a hundred telepaths - let alone a hundred who would all participate in this alleged mass suicide - would have to have at least _a hundred thousand people_.

And to have a hundred _rogues_ in one place - this would have to be a metropolis. (And they would not be called "rogues" in a country that didn't register telepaths!)

Going roughly by today's population figures, if there are five million people in all of Chiapas, the whole state, then there are about five thousand telepaths, registered or not, living in cities or towns or villages in rural areas. Somehow, one hundred of them died in a church.

  * Where are the normals? Suddenly invisible? Looking the other way? A church is on fire, and no one tries to rescue the people inside? They stand there and listen to the telepaths singing their way to their deaths?



No, the key point is what's said in that scene - this incident was important for the _perception_ that the telepaths inside that church would rather die than be regulated by the Authority.

What likely happened was something a little like the [Jedwabne pogrom of 1941](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedwabne_pogrom). Those telepaths didn't spontaneously commit suicide in a church - they took refuge there from a mob that had come to murder them, the same mob that blocked the exits (so the Authority stood helplessly outside, unable to save them), the same mob that set the church ablaze. Trapped by the murderous mundanes, the telepaths inside sang hymns as they died. And the whole thing had jack shit to do with a protest of "registration" or the Earth Alliance or anything else.

They may even have been rounded up precisely _because_ they were already registered, letting the mundanes know exactly who to kill.

  * After the massacre, the powers that be in Chiapas tried to cover it up, that cover-up went hand in hand with the goals of the anti-Earth Alliance propaganda machine, and the "Chiapas Incident" was born.



Someone with a lot of influence, someone who wanted to stir public opinion around the world against the Earth Alliance and its policies (and many problems), came up with this story because they knew, as Kevin Vacit says in that scene, "people generally like martyrs." Especially dead telepaths. That's why Robinson, a month or two later, stole the idea and made a (pro-Earth Alliance, pro-registration) martyr out of Karges.

**********

And Byron Gordon is actually _so stupid_ as to believe that the Chiapas Incident really happened as described in the propaganda - and _actually really_ sets himself on fire in protest of the Corps (while no normals try to save him), setting off an _actual real_ civil war - leading to tens (hundreds?) of thousands of telepath dead or injured.

Bravo.


End file.
